Known
by AllyJackson
Summary: Gansey had been playing with the pronoun for months now and the more right the little word felt, the more scared and unsure she felt. And it did feel right. But her girlfriend was straight.


Gansey hadn't planned to be spending 3am staring at the mirror of a small motel somewhere in the middle of America, but here she was.

 _She._

Gansey had been playing with the pronoun for months now and the more right the little word felt, the more scared and unsure she felt. And it did feel right. The more she used it - in her head always, whispered to herself at night - the more it fit, the more she felt sure it had always been meant to be a word for her.

But her girlfriend was straight.

Gansey looked away from her own, tired face in the mirror and stared at her hands clenched into desperate fists on the sink. She loved Blue. And she wasn't really worried about Blue reacting poorly to Gansey being a girl, but. Blue was straight.

Gansey breathed deep, in and out, slowly, trying to keep the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes from falling. She was a noisy cryer and the bathroom door was as thin as the motel walls and the last thing Gansey wanted right now was to wake Henry and Blue up. Her boyfriend and girlfriend would worry and they would want to know what was wrong and she didn't want to - couldn't - tell them right now.

She wasn't so worried about Henry. Henry was ace and had no preference for gender and Gansey doubted he would care much if his boyfriend-and-girlfriend became his two-girlfriends.

But Blue was straight.

Gansey turned the sink on and splashed water on her face, still trying to work the tightness from her throat. _Her. She._ The words felt right as much as Gansey wanted them to feel wrong.

Gansey couldn't be a girl. She couldn't. The prophecy around Blue's true love was clear. Her true love was a boy. Her true love was a _he_. Blue's kiss has killed Gansey.

And yet, Gansey wasn't a boy. And Blue loved Henry as well as Gansey and Gansey loved Henry as well as Blue and Henry loved them. Despite Blue's prophecy.

So where did that leave them?

 _Stop. Stop it. You're thinking too much. Stop overthinking things and just get back in bed._ Gansey rubbed her hands over her eyes and sniffed quietly. She could think about this another time. Or never. Push it back, far back, and try to forget about it. She loved Blue and Blue was straight and the prophecy was clear. Gansey was just confused.

She didn't feel confused, but she did feel exhausted, so she opened the bathroom door with the plan to curl up between Henry and Blue and just forget about this night and every night she'd spent like it.

That plan shattered when she came face to face with Henry in the doorway.

"Oh, finally." Henry slurred his words, still half-asleep, but his eyes widened when he saw Gansey.

"You look awful." Gansey cursed herself for leaving the lights on and her face visible, but she hadn't expected anyone to be by the door.

"Do I?" She laughed shakily and tried to push past Henry. "It's nothing, don't worry about it."

She hadn't gotten more than a step forward before Henry's hand was on her chest and pushing her back into the bathroom, closing the door behind them.

"Gansey," Henry sighed. They stood there, both silent and unsure what to say.

"Henry, I'm fine, really. I'm just tired." Gansey sniffed.

Henry sighed again and cupped Gansey's face in his hands. He rubbed his thumbs under her eyes, then gently pushed her down to sit on the toilet seat. He crouched on the ground in front of her and laid his chin on her thighs, looking up at her.

"What's wrong?" he whispered, taking Gansey's hands in his and squeezing gently.

Gansey's sniff sounded more like a whimper and she could have swore at herself for her lack of self-control because the next thing she knew the tears she had been holding back for the better part of an hour all came bursting through the dam.

Henry didn't say anything, just pushed his forehead into her knees and rubbed his thumbs over the back of her hands.

Gansey was a noisy cryer and she was also a clingy cryer, a fact that Helen and Ronan were well-acquainted with, so it wasn't long before Henry was sitting on the floor against the wall, with Gansey in his lap, her clutching his nightshirt and her head in the space between his jaw and his shoulder.

He let her cry and just rubbed her back and hummed into her hair, not saying anything, and, not for the first time, Gansey felt completely, achingly known.

Neither Gansey nor Henry knew how long they sat like that, but Gansey was long out of tears before she finally spoke. She kept her face pressed into Henry's neck because somehow this was easier to confess when she wasn't looking at him.

"I - I'm," Gansey breathed. How to say this? How to admit it? Should she? She couldn't keep this a secret from Blue if she told Henry. She couldn't keep a part of herself from one of them and give it to the other.

 _Of course_ , she thought at herself scathingly, _how could you ever have thought to keep a part of yourself from either of them?_

"I think I'm a girl." Gansey knew she was a girl, but it was easier to get out if she seemed unsure. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was just confused and Henry could show her where she'd gone wrong and they could keep this from Blue and Gansey could be a boy that Blue loved.

"I think -" her voice broke. "I think I'm a girl."

Henry pressed a kiss to the top of her head and hugged her tightly. "Okay."

"Okay?" Gansey could have laughed. Of course it would be that easy with Henry. It was part of why she loved him.

"Okay."

When Gansey looked up at her boyfriend her heart almost broke with the love she saw in his face. His eyes looked a little wet, too, but he was smiling when he pushed her hair back from her forehead and kissed the crease between her eyebrows.

She burst into tears again and hid her face in his shoulder, ignoring the fact that she must be soaking his nightshirt, because Henry accepted her. _Of course_ he accepted her, she had never expected any different, but it was one thing to know and quite another for it to have happened.

Gansey missed the door opening over the sound of her own crying and she barely processed the weight of Henry's hand leaving the back of her head to wave Blue into the room, but she didn't miss Blue crouching down behind her, wrapping her arms around her and laying her head on her back.

Gansey stilled.

 _No._ This wasn't what she wanted. She didn't know how Blue would react but it didn't matter how Blue reacted because however she reacted, they'd have to break up because Blue was straight and Gansey was a girl. And she'd still have Henry, Henry _knew_ her, and she'd still have Ronan, Ronan was trans himself and the worst he'd do was laugh and say he saw it coming all along, and she'd still have Adam because Adam was Adam and couldn't give less of a shit about the gender of his friends, and maybe she'd have Blue as a friend but she wouldn't be able to have Blue as a girlfriend and she didn't want that, she wanted -

Gansey had started to sob without realizing, big, gross tears and loud, bubbly breaths that she could hardly control. It wasn't until she stopped her shaking that she realized Blue was crying, too. Gansey could feel her tears through the back of her shirt.

Blue had kept her face pressed into Gansey's back, despite the sobs shaking through her, but she lifted her head now to be heard.

"I've been thinking, for a while now, that I might be gay." No one moved, except for Henry, who had started to rub Gansey's back again and had moved to take one of Blue's hands. Gansey could still feel tears on her face, but she held her breath, desperate to hear Blue. Could she possibly be so lucky?

"I didn't want to tell you, Gansey. I didn't want it to be true. A lesbian with two boyfriends? How does that work?" Blue laughed, but Gansey heard the break in her voice.

"I finally broke down and told Henry." Blue paused and looked up at Henry. He nodded and she continued. "He came out to me, too. He's genderfluid, Gansey. Sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, always ours. But that still left me a lesbian with a boyfriend who was always my boyfriend. And I . . . I was so scared to tell you."

Blue trailed off, but Gansey stayed completely still, doing her best to keep her sniffles as quiet as she could.

Blue laid her head back down on Gansey's back.

"I heard, Gansey. You're a girl."

Gansey let out the big, shuddering breath she'd been holding. She hugged herself tightly and nodded repeatedly, laughing breathlessly.

Henry kissed her head again and Blue giggled back, just as shakily, and repeated, "You're a girl. And Henry's a girl sometimes and I like girls. And we don't have to worry."

Gansey breathed, in and out, slowly, trying to level out her voice before she spoke. "But the prophecy-"

"Fuck the prophecy!" Blue giggled again. "It's over, Gansey. We don't have to worry about it, ever again. I kissed you and you died, but you're here now. You're here, and I love you and I love Henry-"

"And I love you both!" Gansey could almost feel Henry grinning into her hair.

"And we're just one big ball of love, crying on the bathroom floor of some mid-Western motel. And I'm gay, but you're a girl, and we're going to be okay. We're okay."

The noise Gansey made was half-sob, half-laugh, but she ignored it in favor of turning around in Henry's arms so she could hug Blue close to her.

And they were going to be okay and each of them knew it. They were just three teenagers laughing and crying in each other's arms on the floor of a motel bathroom, but they were going to be okay.

 _Ronan would laugh his ass off if he saw us now_ , Gansey thought, then said out loud.

Blue and Henry laughed. "Yeah, he probably would," Blue admitted.

"But only because he loves us!" Henry said, smiling.

Gansey grinned back and clutched them both, her sometimes-girlfriend-sometimes-boyfriend and her always-girlfriend, to her tightly.

She was known, and she was loved, and they were going to be okay.

* * *

 _This is a first draft that's gone completely un-beta'd and almost completely unedited and it's also around four in the morning, so it probably sucks, but that's not going to stop me from rubbing my queerness all over these characters, because I love them. Please leave a review, it's how I get better!_

 _(This was largely influenced by theronancycle's tumblr post:_ _/post /152398517502 /tbh -i -often -see -ppl -be -like -blue -is -a -lesbian)_


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